Technoscientific Research, 2nd Edition

15 General issues of research ethics

This chapter contains an overview of ethical issues related to a typical cycle of empirical research, comprising: the definition of research goals and research methodology, the formulation of hypotheses and exploration of sources of background information, the design of experiments and their technical and logistic preparation, the implementation of experiments and acquisition of raw experimental data, the analysis, processing and interpretation of those data and the publication of research results. This overview begins with a general characterisation of ethical infringements in technoscience and their tentative aetiology (Section 15.2). Next, an outline of the evolution of research ethics over the last ...